Does anyone know...

...how does one start a Whole New Congress Movement? We could start with rallies in or marches to the public squares of major cities all asking people to commit to throw their Senators and Representatives out of office in the next election.

The Wikipedia article matches my recollections from the 1980s fairly well. I even remember that crack from 1980 about the suburban swimming pool. Since I do, I can counter the oft-made but baseless assertion that the "challenging" party was always colored red.

Polls are showing that the GOP is losing political ground to such an extent that they may lose their ownership of the House of Representatives. From an article in HuffingtonPost.com:

Shutting down the government may end up costing Republicans control of the House of Representatives.

A series of polls released Sunday show just how damaging the shutdown has been for the GOP. The liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling compiled two dozen surveys, commissioned and paid for by MoveOn.org Political Action, from House districts around the country, taken from Oct. 2 through Oct. 4. Sample sizes were between 600 and 700 voters in each district.

If they lose control of The House, Obama could pretty much get whatever he wants, and of course they don't want that. The Tea Party is ripping the GOP apart, and I couldn't be happier.

Take my home state of Ohio, for example. Cuyahoga County is basically Cleveland and most of its proximate suburbs. It has a huge proportion of black voters. Note that its size is nearly the same as some of the congressional districts in the rural and mostly white center of the state. Congressional districts probably should be designed so that each contains approximately the same number of voters, and yet Cuyahoga County's population is about 1,250,000. Ashland County is about the same physical size, but its population is about 52,000. And this is probably not the most outrageous example. I just didn't have time for a serious search.

You used words like this before. I understood that gerrymandering means ensuring all "your" districts are won by a 51% margin and all your opponents districts are won be 99% majority. Do I misunderstand?

The motive behind gerrymandering is to redraw districts to favor one's party. The origin of the term is interesting.

When mapped, one of the contorted districts in the Boston area was said to resemble the shape of a salamander. The term was a portmanteau of the governor's last name and the word salamander. (from a Wikipedia article)

"If they lose control of The House, Obama could pretty much get whatever he wants"

What pisses me off, is that he had it that way for the first two years of his first term, but he was so concerned with showing the public what a nice guy he was - the first Black family on an all-White block have to work twice as hard at being respected - that he didn't take advantage of it, then the Tea Party saw the hole, and filled it.

This budget situation has really gone from being amusing to me to making me furious. NOW they are talking about letting the government default on its debts, which could not only damage the credit rating of the US government, but also could have grave implications for the world economy.

The public has to rise up and get in touch with their Federal legislators and read them the riot act.